Texas Death Penalty

Ever since the outset of the American Constitution, capital punishment has existed as a crime sentence in the United States. However, in recent decades, this topic has become highly controversial, as many states have dictated against the death penalty. Although states with this position on capital punishment are increasing, some states, such as Texas, have continued to edict this practice in their provinces. In the State of Texas, the sentence to death upon a person should not be permitted due to the fact it can wrongly convict a person, its court trial is highly expensive, and it brings forth an unjust treatment.

One reason why capital punishment sanctions should not be allowed in Texas is due to the possibility of wrongful conviction towards

Throughout various court cases, convicts have reported to be victims of racial bias and discrimination due to their skin color. There has even been local statistical studies that prove this to be the case. In Harris County, for instance, of the defendants put on death row who “were sentenced to death for crimes that occurred when they were teenagers...73.3% were black and only 13.3% were white” (“Race and the Death Penalty”). Such action was seen in the case of Gary Graham, a fellow 17 year-old African-American, who was convicted for the robbery of a supermarket and the killing of Bobby Lambert in the year 1981. Throughout the case, Graham’s culpability was questioned multiple times due to the lack of provable and cogent evidence of his crime. For instance, although being a witness, Bernadine Skillerns’ testimony about glimpsing the murderer’s face through “a car windshield...30-40 feet away” was not ample enough to truly blame Graham of the crime ("Executed But Possibly Innocent"). Even more, two other witnesses that allegedly worked in the supermarket described Graham as not being the killer. Moreover, rather perfunctorily, the two witnesses were never “interviewed by Graham's court appointed attorney” ("Executed But Possibly Innocent"). Conceivably, decision-makers and court appointed attorney’s may fall back on conscious or oblivious preferences about who are the most noticeably awful sorts of convicts or who are the more sympathetic convicts, therefore, creating a potential bias system towards one's race. However, some may have a point that in some occasions racial bias can be hard to prove and is sometimes misleading. Nonetheless, due to the actions of court functionaries, the probability of wrongfully and purposely convicting someone to the death penalty due to skin color still